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“The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one of the greatest legends of jazz, soul and popular music in the intimate surroundings of Ronnie Scott’s sold out to club members within six minutes of going on sale. The two shows which will take place on 18th June have been the club’s fastest selling shows to date.” – Music News.com

Catch George throughout the summer as he visits and performs in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Tunisia, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan and China. Stay up to date on all shows here.

George recently paid a visit to our friends at BBC Breakfast. In cased you missed it, you can view it here.

Guitar Man will also be available at iTunes on October 4, 2011 + there will be a special deluxe edition with bonus tracks available only atBest Buy, also on October 4!

Enter your email address above to get a free MP3 download of “Danny Boy” from George’s upcoming album Guitar Man

For Immediate Release – On October 4, 2011, National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master and Grammy-winning legend George Benson brings his guitar to the forefront in his newest album Guitar Man. The 12-song collection includes a mix of jazz and pop standards – some in a combo setting and some solo, but all of them tied together seamlessly by Benson’s soulful and exploratory signature sound. Lending a hand on this recording is a solid team made up of veterans and newcomers alike – pianist Joe Sample, keyboardist and musical director David Garfield, bassist Ben Williams and drummer Harvey Mason. Williams is one of the hottest up-and-coming new artists on the jazz scene. Mason is a regular member of Fourplay, and a studio collaborator with Benson all the way back to Benson’s 1976 blockbuster album, Breezin’.

In a career that spans five decades, more than 30 recordings as a leader and ten Grammy Awards, Benson has used his jazz roots as the foundation for an engaging mix of pop, R&B and other shades that add up to a style that appeals to a broad mainstream audience. Along the way, he has also established himself as a formidable jazz singer – one whose biggest career hits have showcased his vocals. But Guitar Man is just what the title implies – an album that highlights Benson’s unparalleled guitar playing, perhaps more than any other album he has released in decades.

For the new project, the crew came together in the studio with a minimum of prior rehearsal time but an eagerness to jump in and lay down tracks in something very close to the live experience – what Benson describes as an “old school” approach. The impromptu sensibility comes across in the final product, much of which came together with minimal takes in a single day of recording.

“We figured that we would get the best energy if we went into the studio with some live musicians who are savvy and flexible,” says Benson, “and boy, did we accomplish that.”

On Guitar Man, Benson’s mastery of the guitar is demonstrated in a variety of styles and settings, all with legendary jazz roots. The opening track “Tenderly” is a solo guitar track that serves as a reminder that Benson is one guitar man with sufficient technical and interpretive skills to be a band unto himself. The second song is an intriguing rendition of Lennon and McCartney’s “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Along with Benson on nylon-string guitar and Garfield on piano are guitarists Paul Jackson Jr. and Ray Fuller; bassist Freddie Washington; drummer Oscar Seaton, Jr. (who regularly tours with Benson); violinist Charlie Bisharat; and flutist/clarinetist Dan Higgins. All come together to create a fully orchestrated sound that casts one of the most simplistic of the Beatles’ early love ballads into something full-bodied and engaging.

The remainder of the set consists of either solo guitar tracks or Benson backed by the aforementioned five-man team, which lays down an easygoing rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour.” Benson delivers the lyrics in his own engaging vocal style that includes a healthy dose of his trademark scatting guitar accompaniment.

Other highlights include a rollicking version of the Champs’ 1958 instrumental hit, “Tequila,” followed a couple tracks later by “My One and Only Love,” which opens with a 16-bar solo jazz guitar intro that segues into a sweet vocal ballad. Benson delivers a playful straightahead rendition of “Paper Moon” with the quartet, followed by a solo guitar rendition of “Danny Boy” (one of the few times, if ever, that a guitar sounds like bagpipes). In the final stretch, Benson and Garfield set up a lush guitar-and-piano arrangement of the smoky standard, “Since I Fell For You,” with Benson once again stepping up to the mic for an emotional delivery of the song’s impassioned lyrics.

Benson has never been one to shy away from innovation or experimentation. For this guitar man, putting a jazz spin on pop standards – not just on this recording but throughout his career – is less of a taboo when you’re willing to dispense with labels and the limitations that come with them.

“People categorize things because they need to find someplace to put them on their shelf,” he says. “It’s all music to me. I think a lot of pop tunes that were very big in the United States many years ago were recorded by jazz musicians playing in the background. Most of the Motown records were recorded that way. Those guys were jazz musicians who were living in Detroit and were called to do a job, and they did it very well…I try to do the same thing. I try to make it sound like it’s natural, because to me it is. There are only two kinds of music, good and bad. There are a lot of things in between, but they’re eventually going to fall on one side or the other of that equation.”

George Benson will be touring in support of Guitar Man. The live shows will feature Benson’s masterful guitar playing, and Benson and his band will be performing classic George Benson hits along with an acoustic presentation of a few songs from Guitar Man.

A husband at age 18, guitarist-singer George Benson knew music as a career was a risky proposition, so he tried other jobs, becoming as handy with tools as he was with a guitar. But then a sudden realization hit him.

Photograph by: Paul Kane, Getty Images

George Benson buried the hatchet for music

Career choice paid off for versatile performer

By MARKE ANDREWS, Vancouver Sun June 23, 2010George Benson

When: Saturday, 8 p.m.

Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Tickets: $67 to $77 from ticketmaster.ca

A husband at age 18, guitarist-singer George Benson knew music as a career was a risky proposition, so he tried other jobs, becoming as handy with tools as he was with a guitar. But then a sudden realization hit him.

“I knew my biggest potential was in the music world, and one day I had a hatchet in my hand and I realized that if I made a mistake with that hatchet, any career I might have would be over,” says Benson by phone from his home in Pardise Valley, Ariz., on a brief break between tours. Benson performs Saturday at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

It makes sense that Benson stayed with music. He began playing for money at the tender age of seven, performing numbers on a ukulele at stores and street corners in his home town of Pittsburgh. The city was known for its musicians, which included drummer Art Blakey, pianists Ahmad Jamal and Earl (Fatha) Hines, saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, and singers Billy Eckstine and Eddie Jefferson. The latter befriended Benson when the young ukulele player was in second grade.

“He had a recording, I Got the Blues, that I sang around town as a little kid with my ukulele,” says Benson. “He came to me on the street corner when I was seven and asked me to sing that song for him. I sang it and he laughed so hard he rolled on the ground.”

Benson started living the musician’s life early, making his first record at age 10, switching to guitar and playing in jazz and R&B bands during his teens, and recording his first album as bandleader at age 21. His formal musical training was minimal; he relied on his ear to learn how to play.

“I learned what I learned by listening to other artists, and hanging around great people who knew what they were doing,” says Benson. “I’m still doing the same thing, just going through different sources.”

Although he didn’t start singing on his recordings until his 1976 album Breezin’, Benson always sang, and had a particular fondness for rhythm and blues. You can hear strains of the late singer Donny Hathaway in Benson’s voice, which makes some sense when you learn that Benson and Hathaway were good friends, even though Hathaway did not have a clue that his guitar-playing buddy wanted to sing.

“We were friends toward the latter part of his life,” said Benson. “We hung out together, and wrote songs together, although nothing that came out. To be around that voice, man. He was a natural. At that time I wasn’t known as a singer even though I did sing, but he didn’t find that out until a short time before he died, when I sang On Broadway and Masquerade.”

On his most recent release, Songs and Stories (2009), Benson performs a Hathaway number, Someday We’ll All Be Free, and sings a duet with the late singer’s daughter, Lalah Hathaway.

Though he spends a good part of his year on the road touring, Benson likes to spend his time off at home, either at the Benson house in Paradise Valley, or his other place in Inglewood, N.J. In his spare time, he conducts Bible studies.

And choosing music for a career not only made for a happy individual, Benson has been successful enough to win 10 Grammy Awards, and he and his wife have raised seven sons on a musician’s income.

It’s dangerous to speculate which program of the two-day Playboy Jazz Festival will be the better one just by glancing at the lineup. Most of the time, you will be wrong. Someone might be having an off-day, one act doesn’t flow comfortably into the next, an overlooked veteran or a newcomer will suddenly get hot, the partying crowd might be distracted or drunk or obsessed with the Lakers game. Case in point: the Saturday concert outpointed Sunday’s in musical interest and energy level. Yet when the sun vanished behind the trees at the Hollywood Bowl, Sunday’s program was suddenly jolted to life by a man from Mali — and the wave he generated rolled through the rest of the night.

It was the great band of Salif Keita — the albino Malian superstar making his Playboy Festival debut — that launched the roll with one monster groove after another, accomplished with pithy, perfectly placed notes on Western electric guitars and thundering African percussion.

Keita, 60, mostly stood stock still, radiating dignity amid the turbocharged grooves, his voice maybe not as spectacularly keening as it once was, but now often almost conversational in character.

Material from his album “La Difference” (Emarcy), like “Ekolo d’Amour,” sounded tougher and more driving live — and Keita and company found it easier to get the dancing audience to sing along than did the domestic acts on the bill. It was a shining Playboy fest moment.

Fortunately, the Manhattan Transfer, which followed Keita, wasn’t intimidated, offering up a smoking jazz-oriented set of their own — with a terrific, seasoned backup band, too. Their vocalise arrangement of Chick Corea’s “Spain” picked up on Keita’s energy — and sprinkled throughout the set were more Corea covers from their adventurous current album, “The Chick Corea Songbook” (4Q). If Chick himself, who performed Saturday, had sat in, it might have been as explosive as that now-storied set at Playboy 1982 when the Transfer joined Weather Report.

George Benson knew what to do, too. He mixed up his set a bit — starting with vocals, then reaching for the instrumentals with a fine “Mambo Inn,” and bringing out a surprise guest, guitarist Earl Klugh, for a journey back to their album “Collaboration.” The presence of Klugh kicked in something for Benson — and from that point on, his guitar went deeper and deeper into the pocket. Any guitarist would trade his rare instrument collection for just one of the incredibly funky fills that Benson pulled off in “Give Me the Night.”

Tiempo Libre, the Cuban expatriate band from Miami, inherited the dancers from Benson and skillfully kept them gyrating until the evening’s end with satisfying Afro-Cuban party grooves sometimes derived from erudite sources (as per their training) like J. S. Bach.

Oddly enough, the most anticipated performance — that of last year’s hit, Esperanza Spalding — was a bit of a letdown. There’s no doubt about her striking stage presence, versatile feminine voice, expertise on standup and electric basses, and the unusual joy and passion she radiates. But with a good but not great band and a lack of powerful material, she failed to connect with the audience in any meaningful way, her desperate attempts to generate a singalong in vain.The Jimi Hendrix of the pedal steel guitar, Robert Randolph — who was impressive in his previous Playboy appearance — was also disappointing; again, subpar material may have been to blame. The set by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and pianist Cedar Walton was somnolent, often inaudible, serving as mere dinner jazz for the crowd.

Irvin Mayfield brought his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra — which, if you looked from a distance and squinted, resembled an old photo of a New Orleans band circa 1910. But Mayfield had a more contemporary political agenda in mind, savaging BP with a wild extended piece, “Somebody Forgot to Turn the Faucet Off.” He barely missed setting off the day’s first wild crowd response, cutting off a bumpy swinging blues just as it was rolling.Regarding this year’s Cos’ of Good Music, even the wretchedly balanced sound could not quite obscure the smoothly swinging trumpet of Ingrid Jensen. But the engineers succeeded in making an almost unintelligible hash of Jazz Mafia’s performance of Adam Theis’ fascinating “Brass Bows And Beats: A Hip-Hop Symphony.” There’s a lot more to this constantly jump-cutting assembly of spare parts from every idiom imaginable than we were allowed to hear.